Enhanced measurement of human activity using FMCW radar

In this paper, we measure human activities using frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar and enhance the conventional radar-based measuring human movement algorithm. To measure human activities, we study and apply the conventional algorithm to FMCW radar signals. The conventional algorithm is using a range spectrogram which is a result of performing 1D-FFT to FMCW radar signal. The range spectrogram reflects the magnitude of targets in each range index. According to the radar equation, the magnitude of signals reflected by the distant targets is lower than that reflected by the close targets. Radar-based quantified movements are in proportion to magnitude difference between scans. As a result, despite same movement, quantified movement of the distant target is lower than that of the close target. To solve the problem, in this paper, we propose enhanced measurement of human activity by adding the range calibration to the conventional algorithm that is unaffected by the distance.